The price of a barrel of oil is set by the commodities market just like alot of other items. The price the oil companies pay is not even taken into consideration. The oil companies are making record profits. Let me repeat that THE OIL COMPANIES ARE MAKING RECORD PROFITS! That is because they are not paying commodity market price for oil. They are paying MUCH MUCH less.
As far as drilling happening is this country goes, you can forget that too. This country is filled with a bunch of tree hugging sheeplike idiots that will not let that happen. Proof of that is that the fact that Al Gore can win the Nobel Peace Prize. You have to be freakin kidding me. Here is a guy that gets paid mega bucks to lie about global warming and BS about our environment. Then whines about how we should conserve and recycle. When he gets done speaking he goes out to his limo followed buy secret service men in suburbans to the airport to fly off in his private jet, What a phuking hyprocrite!